He explained that the sides will start an exchange of written messages which will be conducted via the judge. "Only if the sides fail to reach an agreement, the judge has to take the decision," he said, refusing to clarify Russia’s complaint.

Tim Osborne, who heads Group Menatep Limited (GML), which held more than 50% of Yukos shares, said earlier the lawyers disagree on whether the dispute should be subject to the arbitrage through intermediary of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) based in the Hague.

In late July 2014, the Hague court sustained a claim of the former Yukos shareholders demanding that Russia should compensate for the damage, and ordered Moscow to pay $50.1 billion or half the $100 billion originally sought by the plaintiffs.

The court ruled that Russia’s actions against Yukos could be regarded as expropriation of investments in breach of Article 45 of the Energy Charter which Russia had signed in the 1990s but never ratified.